


That's Why a Duck

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-18
Updated: 2009-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-20 18:16:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a prank war escalates, Sam learns something new about his father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That's Why a Duck

**Author's Note:**

> Written for innie_darling's birthday. The prompt she gave me is at the end. Set at some point during the year before the boys went to Truman High, title from the Marx Brothers. Thank you to marinarusalka for the beta.

It was always difficult to keep track of who started it. Didn't matter now; it had been going on for three towns and two weeks running, and Sam felt too deep in it to think back.

They were in a diner in South Bend having breakfast, on their way to Illinois. Sam pushed up the sleeves of his sweatshirt, which was too big for him, a hand-me-down from Dean, and then poked his fork into the stack of pancakes on his plate, Dad's big bulk next to him in the booth.

Across from them, Dean shook salt onto his scrambled eggs, and the lid of the shaker came off.

Dean let out a loud curse that had some of the other patrons turning to look. Then Dean shot Sam a glare across the table, full of the promise of torment and retribution. Sam grinned back, and Dean kicked him in the shin so hard it made Sam jerk in place and tear up.

"Boys," Dad said.

He looked pretty tired, circles under his eyes. For the past month, he'd been taking Dean on hunt after hunt, and going out on plenty by himself, no matter how much Dean argued that he should go with him, no matter how much Dean fumed and grumbled at Sam about it after Dad had left.

The pranking often seemed to happen when things got like that.

Which didn't make it any easier to figure out who had started it.

* * *

He had no idea how Dean did it, but when they stopped for lunch, eating take-out fast food on picnic benches by the roadside, there was hot sauce in Sam's ketchup packets.

Coughing, Sam grabbed for his coke, and drank until all he could get out of the cup was the gurgling noise of air going through the straw.

Dad patted him on the back without saying a word, without even looking up from his French fries and his notebook, where he scribbled information about a haunting in Joliet.

"Dude, when are you going to give it up?" Dean folded his arms and clicked his tongue against his teeth. "C'mon, I won this already."

"In your dreams, poo breath."

"Wow, Sam, that's some pretty sharp repartee you've got there. Guess that vocabulary comes with being a straight-A genius geekoid."

There were times when Sam really, really wanted to punch Dean in the face, but Dean was a lot bigger than him and knew more about fighting. Plus Dad would probably freak if they started fighting now.

After he was done laughing at Sam, Dean leaned forward to look at Dad's notes. A wind picked up, stirring the scent of fried food, pine needles, and exhaust. Sam watched Dad and Dean for a moment, how alike they were, heads bent over the notebook. Dean reached out to hold down a page that the wind threatened to tear away. His hand was like Dad's, large and roughened.

Sam went back to reading. It was a play called _Our Town_ , an assignment from the last school he'd attended. He wondered what it would be like to live in the same place for a really long time.

* * *

Dad rented out an apartment with two rooms and a kitchenette. The walls were stained, but otherwise it wasn't too bad. It had a TV, and the heat worked.

Sam glued the laces of Dean's boots together.

Dean put a dozen fake spiders in Sam's bed.

If Sam screamed and thought they were real at first, it was only because the glow of the street lamp outside his window cast the shadows a certain way.

"Hey, what's going on in here?" The overhead light flicked on.

Looking bleary-eyed and a little ominous, dressed in gray sweats and a ragged t-shirt, Dad stood in the door.

"Nothing," Sam and Dean said in unison.

But Dad's eyes went to the rumpled covers on Sam's bed and the small dark objects scattered against the pale sheets. He walked over and picked one up, turning it over in his fingers, the way he did when he investigated a hunt.

He cleared his throat and his eyebrows went up. "Plastic spiders, Dean? Seriously?"

Sitting on his bed in his sweats, back up against the headboard, Dean shrugged.

"All right. Take them out of Sam's bed, and then I don't want a peep out of either of you until oh-seven-hundred hours, you got that?"

"Yeah, got it," said Sam, as Dean said, "Yes, sir."

* * *

After Dean fell asleep, Sam put itching powder in Dean's socks.

* * *

In the morning (once Dean was done scratching, yelling at Sam, washing his feet, and borrowing socks from Dad), Dad took Dean off to take care of a poltergeist. Sam watched them pack up iron rounds, canisters of salt, matches, chalk, and lighter fluid.

Sam knew how to shoot and what to do about a poltergeist but he was only asked to go on certain hunts. Three people had died as a result of this haunting so far; Dad told Sam to hold down the fort.

Sam looked at the easy way Dad gripped Dean's shoulder when they were done. How they walked to the door with the same stride, Dean in Dad's wake, heads bowed the same way, the line of their shoulders two of the most familiar shapes in the universe to Sam. They were bulky in the same way, even if Dad was still a lot bigger than Dean.

He spent the day working on his Latin verbs, watching TV, and looking at the clock. The phone didn't ring; if something bad happened, Dean or Dad, whichever one was still standing, would call.

* * *

They returned long after sunset. Sam heated up cans of soup, listening to them talk about the hunt, how they could do it better next time.

Sitting opposite them, Sam ate his chicken noodle soup, watching their faces. He watched their hands as they ate, searching for bruises or cuts, and looked at their shirts for bloodstains, but they both seemed to be intact.

When they were done eating, Dean and Dad both moved to take their bowls to the sink but Sam snatched them up.

"I got it," said Sam.

Dean just shrugged, but Dad gave him a small, tired smile. He reached out and squeezed Sam's wrist, a quick grasp, and then let go.

* * *

Sam kept bracing himself for retaliation after the itching powder but Dean seemed pretty beat after the poltergeist, slept late the next morning. After two days, Sam decided the war was over.

* * *

On the morning of the third day, Sam was in the kitchen making himself a poptart. He usually went into the bathroom first, but he'd been so hungry that morning he'd stumbled straight into the kitchen.

Dean wandered in a few minutes later, rubbing his fingers through his short-cropped hair and yawning. When he saw Sam, he stopped and his face went sort of blank.

A second later, Dad's shouted curse reverberated through the tiny apartment, followed by a sound like pebbles falling down a waterfall.

Sam saw Dean mouth _oh, shit_.

* * *

Marbles in the medicine cabinet, with a piece of cardboard to hold them in place until somebody opened the mirror, was a new milestone in the annals of Winchester prankdom.

Sam wished he'd thought of it.

Dad didn't yell. He told Dean to go pick up the marbles, and that was that.

* * *

"You want to help your old man with an errand?" Dad said that afternoon.

Sam looked up from his book, blinked, and then realized Dad was talking to him, not Dean. "Uh, sure," he said.

Dad nodded towards Dean. "Make sure you clean and oil the guns."

"You got it."

By the time they left, Dean had his Walkman on, the sound loud enough to hear halfway across the room, sitting cross-legged on the floor with the guns spread out around him.

Sam hardly ever got to ride shotgun. He rolled the window down a few inches, feeling the rumble of the Impala go up from his feet and through his body, the sharp finger of wind against his face. Dad put on some Clapton.

He fidgeted, nudging the toes of his sneakers against the back of the footwell. Sometimes he didn't know what to say to Dad when it wasn't about what to eat for dinner or chores or questions about guns and spirits and monsters. Or when they were fighting.

"Where are we going?" Sam asked.

"Not sure yet -- we'll have to try a few places until we find what I'm looking for."

"And that would be..." Sam let a hint of impatience creep into his voice.

Dad's mouth was curved slightly, his eyes on the road -- Sam knew when his father was drawing things out on purpose, relishing Sam's curiosity. "Dean probably shouldn't have set up a gag where I might trigger it first," Dad said, after a few dozen more miles had unfurled beneath them. Then he grinned, his glance sliding over to Sam. "Your brother thinks he's hot stuff when it comes to pranks."

Sam's eyes widened. "Wait. Are you planning to..."

"Why should you boys have all the fun? Don't mess with the master."

The car roared past small houses and long stretches of fence between the road and overgrown meadows.

"You know I was in Vietnam, right?" Dad's gaze was fixed on the road again.

Sam's heart beat a little faster. Dad didn't talk about that too much. "Yeah, I know."

"So, there was a lot of waiting time, and man, it could drive you crazy eight ways to Sunday." He rubbed his palms against the steering wheel. "Me and the guys would try to out-do each other with gags. Kept us from thinking too hard about what we'd have to do next, how ugly it might be."

When he glanced over at his father, Sam could suddenly see what he might've looked like then. Maybe a little like Dean.

Something clicked in Sam, two pieces that hadn't made sense before. He'd always wondered why Dad never gave them any PT or punishment for the pranks. He just let Sam and Dean go at it until they wore themselves out and got tired of it (until the next time it started up).

They were going by gas stations and restaurants now, until finally they pulled into a small strip mall, and went into one of those card stores that also sold a lot of gag gifts. The woman behind the counter had nails painted bright green, her black hair pulled up in a green clip that had glitter on it.

"Well, hi," she said, leaning forward on her elbows. "Aren't you cute," she said, and Sam got it pretty quick that she might've been talking to him, but she was staring at Dad.

"Well, hi, yourself," Dad said, and leaned an elbow on the counter. The girl leaned closer. "Me and my boy're looking for something, this seems like the kind of place that might have them."

"Oh, really?" She tilted her head to the side. "What's that?"

"Rubber ducks," Dad said.

"Rubber...ducks?" Her eyebrows went up.

"We'll need a lot of them."

"Wow. That's a new one. How many's a lot?"

Dad scrunched up his face, thinking. "Two dozen? The small ones."

The girl laughed. She had a nice laugh, sweet. It made Sam think of root beer. He tried not to stare at where her yellow v-neck t-shirt dipped down.

"I'll see if we have extras in the back."

* * *

The first duck, Sam placed on Dean's chest while he was napping on the couch, a motorcycle magazine lying open on his stomach.

When Dean stirred, opens his eyes, and looked down, the expression on his face was one of the most wonderful things Sam had ever seen.

* * *

The second one Sam didn't know about until they sat down for dinner and Dean jabbed a fork into the plate of spaghetti and meatsauce Dad put down in front of him.

There was a squeaky noise, and Dean pulled out his fork, staring at the object stuck on the end of it, the little orange beak visible, surrounded by red sauce.

* * *

The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth ones fell on Dean's head as he walked into their room.

* * *

The seventh one wound up in Dean's shoe. Sam didn't put it there.

* * *

Eight was a quick movement by Dad when Dean got up to get more soda. When Dean sat back down he went very still, jaw clamped tight, then reached down, pulled the duck out from under his butt, and threw it at Sam.

Sam ducked.

From under the table, he glanced up at Dad, and they grinned at each other.

* * *

By the time they got to duck number eighteen, Dean was checking his seat before he sat down, putting his hand into his boots before pulling them on, and walking more carefully than usual.

He shot Sam a dark glare whenever he got a chance.

Retribution was sure to follow, but he didn't care. This was worth it.

* * *

The twenty-fourth duck was Dad's.

Dean reached into the trunk and pulled out his shotgun, preparing to do the weapons check Dad had asked him to do, while Sam was busy counting boxes of ammo.

"Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me." Turning to Sam, Dean pointed to the tip of the shotgun barrel. "Seriously? I mean, seriously?"

Sam put on his best innocent look.

Dad, who'd been standing near the car supervising them, was laughing quietly, his shoulders shaking a little as he kept his mouth shut to hold it in, but Dean only shook his head at Sam and then tugged at the electrical tape holding the little yellow rubber duck to the barrel of the gun.

Muttering under his breath, Dean put the shotgun back into the trunk and turned back to Sam. "Okay, touché, kiddo. Didn't think your brain was that weird. Wait, never mind. Actually, I'm not at all surprised."

There was a snort from Dad, and then he burst out into a full belly laugh, warm and deep. Sam wished his father would laugh like that more often.

"Wait. You were in on this?" Dean stared at Dad, who turned to Sam and held out his palm so Sam could high-five him. "You were in on this _together?_ " Dean's voice squeaked, just a little. The look of betrayal on his face was epic.

"Don't mess with the master, Dean," said Sam.

Dean was shaking his head again like they were both nuts, turning back to the guns, but Sam spotted his quick flicker of a smile.

A giggle escaped Sam before he could stop it.

Dad leaned against the side of the Impala, ankles crossed, and turned his head up towards the afternoon sun. Sam leaned next to him, his elbow bumping his father's arm.

"You two think you're pretty funny, don't you?" Dean said.

Sam glanced up at Dad, who rubbed his curled fist against his shirt. "Yep."

Dean muttered something under his breath.

Oh yes. Retribution would be fearsome.

  
~end

  
\+ The marbles in the medicine cabinet gag came from [this website](http://www.gwally.com/pranks). The rest is my fault, as well as [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/innie_darling/profile)[**innie_darling**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/innie_darling/) 's for saying she'd like a fic about _John and Sam teaming up to prank Dean_.


End file.
